Sustainability

MIT spinoff Electrified Thermal Solutions is developing electrically charged bricks that generate and store heat as part of an effort to one day replace fossil fuels, reports Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News. “If you are running an industrial plant where you’re making cement or steel or glass or ceramics or chemicals or even food or beverage products, you burn a lot of fossil fuels,” explains Daniel Stack SM '17, PhD '21, chief executive of Electrified Thermal Solutions. “Our mission is to decarbonize industry with electrified heat.”

An opinion piece by Katie Martin of the Financial Times explores how Prof. Emil Verner and colleagues have found that climate pledges made by banks and other financial institutions are not effective at reducing carbon emissions. “We find no evidence of reduced financed emissions through engagement,” the paper states. “We conclude that net zero commitments do not lead to meaningful changes in bank behavior.”

Prof. Asegun Henry founded Fourth Power, a startup using new technology to cut the cost of storing renewable energy, reports Adele Peters for Fast Company.  The technology is designed “to tap into excess renewable energy,” explains Peters. “That energy heats up liquid tin, which flows down carbon pipes to heat up the blocks. When the grid needs electricity again, the system generates it using special solar panels that run on the white-hot light from the pipes rather than sunshine. Because the system was designed for durability, the team expects it to last for three decades—far longer than lithium-ion batteries, which quickly degrade.”

An analysis by The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein notes despite Republican resistance to electric vehicles, many new production facilities are located in GOP-represented states. MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese explains EV companies are simply seeking space and nearby manufacturing and construction capacity, but said “it’s pretty hard to think of a technology where there was a cheaper, better technology to solve a consumer need and consumers prioritized a cultural or political patina over lower costs and higher quality.”

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that “showing AI-generated images of a less car-reliant American city boosted support for sustainable transportation policies,” reports Linda Poon for Bloomberg. “Let’s help them imagine what it would actually be like to live in a car-less neighborhood, and a car-less city,” says postdoctoral associate Rachit Dubey. 

Prof. Kripa Varanasi and Vishnu Jayaprakash SM '19, PhD '21 co-founded AgZen, an MIT spinoff that is developing new technologies to improve the performance and effectiveness of pesticide treatments, reports The Economist. The new technologies “could reduce the total amount of fungicides and insecticides sprayed over complete crops by some 90%, as well as cutting the amount of adjuvants required,” writes The Economist.

Prof. John Sterman speaks with New York Times reporter Susan Shain about the effectiveness of flight offsets. Sterman explains that few offset project results are verifiable, immediate and durable, part of his criteria for legitimacy. Better recommendations include insulating your home or buying an electric car.

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with The Hill reporters Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk about the implications of the latest climate rule put in place to mitigate power plant emissions. “What we’ve seen, even without these rules, is that coal generation is failing,” says Knittel. “These new rules will certainly push to speed that transition up.”

Robert Stoner, interim director of the MIT Energy Initiative, speaks with Boston Public Radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act provides funding for hydrogen hubs around the country to create networks of hydrogen fuel producers. “We're going to use hydrogen as a substitute for natural gas. In order for that to happen, we have to get the cost way down,” Stoner explains.

Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto spotlights how MIT President Sally Kornbluth is “determined to harness MIT’s considerable brainpower to tackle” climate change. During a clean-tech entrepreneurship event hosted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, Kornbluth highlighted the newly announced Climate Project at MIT, “which commits $75 million and dozens of faculty to solving some of the biggest climate problems.” Kornbluth also noted that MIT’s “culture of entrepreneurship” makes the Institute uniquely positioned to help address the challenges posed by climate change.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere explored the effectiveness of climate commitments made by banks to mitigate the effects of climate change, reports Nicole Goodkind for CNN. “Our results cast doubt on the efficacy of voluntary climate commitments for reducing financed emissions, whether through divestment or engagement,” the researchers note.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that climate pledges made by banks to reduce carbon emissions and finance energy transitions may not be as effective as previously thought, reports Eshe Nelson for The New York Times. “The researchers found that since 2018 the banks had reduced lending 20 percent to sectors they had targeted in their climate goals, such as oil and gas and transport,” explains Nelson. “That seems like progress, but the researchers argued it was not sufficient because the decline was the same for banks that had not made the same commitment.”

Senior Lecturer John Parsons speaks with Grist reporter Gautama Mehta about the future of nuclear energy in the United States. “It’s also possible that nuclear, if we can do it, is a valuable contribution to the system, but we need to learn how to do it cheaper than we’ve done so far,” explains Parsons. “I would hate to throw away all the gains that we’ve learned from doing it.”

MIT researchers have developed a 3D printer that can use “unrecognizable printing materials in real-time to create more eco-friendly products,” reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. The engineers “detailed a newly designed mathematical function that allows off-the-shelf 3D-printer’s extruder software to use multiple materials—including bio-based polymers, plant-derived resins, or other recyclables,” explains Paul.

Prof. Kripa Varanasi co-founded Alsym Energy, a startup “developing rechargeable batteries that won’t be based on lithium or cobalt,” reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “The founders said they expect to build batteries that match the performance of today’s lithium-ion cells but at about half the cost,” writes Bray.